Stellarium

Satellites Plugin

Asked by Roman Stoviak

In the previous ver. <10 of ST I made an auto TLE downloader (in VB.net) that computed the objects as moons, it worked well except for my orbital computations. It updated and configured the ini before ST start. With the 10+ version many of this is taken care of except the pre configuration. As a hobbiest programmer I would like to do the same again, a pre config that will check for new satellites, update the master satellites.json (which will be complete from celestrak to start) then configure a master visible list and a "favorites" (force visible) grouping. Still in the pre-design stage and have some questions

When the plugin auto downloads new TLE data (unforced) when does this occour? At startup? Pre-Compute?
If the TLE data is forced updated does the new data automatically get queried - or - does it require a restart?
Big?? - When the TLE data is updated does it find the raw data by the "friendly name" IE "ISS (ZARYA)" or by the Object ID IE 25544? -- The Chinese debris is all named the same for instance.

I noticed when the "Frequency" is added the little radio antenna button works, also theres a descriptor for "Modulation". In the furure is there going to be some kind of provision for Ameteur Radio & antenna tracking?

TIA -- Great Program!
Roman

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Matthew Gates
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Best Matthew Gates (matthew-porpoisehead) said : 		#1

Hi Roman,

> When the plugin auto downloads new TLE data (unforced) when
> does this occour? At startup? Pre-Compute?

When the "updates enabled" checkbox is checked, every 13 seconds Stellarium makes a check, "is the last update date more than [update frequency] hour ago?". If yes, the update process is started. When the process completes, the last update date is set to the current time.

> If the TLE data is forced updated does the new data automatically
> get queried - or - does it require a restart?

Exisiting Satellite objects are updated immediately.

> Big?? - When the TLE data is updated does it find the raw data
> by the "friendly name" IE "ISS (ZARYA)" or by the Object ID IE
> 25544? -- The Chinese debris is all named the same for instance.

Now it uses the ID in [square parenthesis] from the celestrak files. However, I wish to change this to use the NORAD IDs in future. This will probably mean a change to the structure of the satelllites.json file.

> I noticed when the "Frequency" is added the little radio antenna
> button works, also theres a descriptor for "Modulation". In the
> furure is there going to be some kind of provision for Ameteur
> Radio & antenna tracking?

For now this is just to display amateur radio communications channels. Attaching to external devices such as antenna rotators would be nice, but doing it in a cross platform way will be difficult. I don't have any detailed plans yet - there are many more basic things to program first.... maybe one day, but not for a long time.

Revision history for this message
Roman Stoviak (spokes2112) said : 		#2

Thank You Matthew.. GREAT PROGRAM!!